Very good news!

I finally finished Twilight! Now I can happily see the movie next Tuesday! I am so excited!!! It was so good. Check out my book blog for my full opinion. It's only too bad that I finished the book way ahead of Annette and Adam; they still have more than half the book to get through. But I didn't mind reading by myself at all. I much preferred it, in fact. I'm very glad that this is a series, though I'll probably finish it very quickly, like within a month or two (if I'm lucky and the library gives me my holds quickly).

Which reminds me. Yesterday, after my Writing Day came to an end, I went to the library and picked up all the remaining books from the Ember series in one fell swoop! Just watch me gobble up these books by checking my book blog often.

Before I end here, I just want to say that I enjoyed another spaghetti dinner with chopsticks (I don't know why it took me until 2009 to realize that eating with chopsticks was so much fun).

One last side note: When are you going to show me your stuff, J. N.? I'm honestly curious to see what you wrote and I haven't heard from you in a while. Email me?

Writing Day #1 Night

Later that Night: Wow, I can't believe that I wrote all day! The time seemed to go a lot quicker that way. Well, according to the time I spent actually writing, it wouldn't seem as if I wrote all day, just under 4 hours of actual typing. I guess it's because I took, if not frequent breaks, then pretty long ones. I took a long walk to the store in the afternoon and took some good time off for food (for dinner tonight, everyone used chopsticks!), but like I promised myself, I never read Twilight. Annette and Adam are on chap. 8 though, while I'm on 10.

I added 663 words to my book. Mind you, I did a lot of rewriting and replaced many words. I've never truly kept track of my word count before, but now I feel a bit more confident that I can reach a high word goal like 1000 words next time. ^,^ And not only did I write a load of words, I feel like I added good quality words. My story needed them somehow. Unfortuately, I didn't get to write anything really original, just added to what I wrote before. I should write an original scene next time. It's so cool reading my old stuff after so long.

But honestly, I'm quite amazed and proud of myself. I didn't realize it, but I hadn't touched my novel since August of 08, 5 months ago! What the heck was I doing all that time, huh? 'Cause I don't know! Ohhhhh, maybe it's because I was reading so much. Too much, maybe. I thought I was getting inspiration, but I was just mostly entertaining myself. This is the reason I've been working on this one book for nearly 3 years. I'm too much of a reader, not enough of a writer.

Still, to stay on the bright side, today it seemed like I had lots of inspiration. Just my decision to sit there and write no matter what really "opened up" my "creative pores," so to speak. Like a mud mask! (I've never tried one of those, it's just metaphorically speaking.) I'm just glad that I had a very positive first experience here, so I'll look forward to the next time. That'll be a week from now, the 14th (7 x 2). I'm glad my family was supportive and not too distracting. I hope next time I will surpass myself in what I write.

Writing Day #1 Morning

I've waken up relatively early by my standards. I've taken care of the menial tasks of brushing my teeth and doing the bird chores (well, at least replacing the newspaper). I really hope I can get some good writing done today. I've had a pretty long vacation from that kind of stuff, now it's back to work. I plan not to do any other work during the day except for this. I'm not even going to take reading breaks for Twilight, which is tempting (hey, I'll give Annette and Adam a chance to catch up).

I'm just going to sit here at the computer, writing as much new material as I can. I'll keep track of how much time I spend and how many words I get written. Of course, I'm not going to be a zombie at my laptop all day. I'm only human. I'll take breaks for meals and maybe go for a walk during the day. I just hope that I'm not too distracted; my computer station is right smack in the living room, and who knows what kind of movie Adam would want to see or what toys he wants to play with loudly.

Hmm, on the other hand, maybe sometime during the day I can unplug the computer and take it outside with me to the backyard, where it'll be quiet except for cars. I think this only runs on an hour long battery, so I'd have to accomplish a lot of writing by then. I'm not going to set up a crazy word goal for myself today (like a 1000 words a day or something ^.^), since I don't know how much I can do on a given day, but I will have a goal next time to do better than I did now. I mean, what I'm going to do now. (sigh)

How am I going to get any writing done if I keep writing this post. I've gotta stop sometime! Alright, that's enough now. Stop it, stop it, stop it, stop it! Come on, Bettina, get a grip on yourself. Just tear yourself away from the post and click Publish. Okay, okay, I'll do it. There, happy now?

Good news, Bad news

Things have been going so-so around here. I just want to go over some pros and slight cons of the day. (I say slight cons because I don't think of the bad side very often, and if there's any badness, it's pretty trivial in comparison.)

The good news is that when Shira and Adam got back from the library yesterday, I had 3 new books to read: Twilight, Coraline, and The Titan's Curse, the 3rd book in the Percy Jackson series.

The bad news is that I'm not crazy about the Percy series, but the first 2 I've been looking forward to for a while (the most obvious reason being that they're both made into movies and there's a lot of hype surrounding them, so I'm jumping on the bandwagon) and I'm definitly reading them first.

More good news is that I've already started Twilight and it's fabulous. (you were so right, Jacoby; it really gets going after a few chapters!)

The bad news though not quite so bad, is that I started reading it aloud with Annette and Adam, because they want to hear the story too. Usually I go through books very fast by myself, reading silently. Saying the words takes too much time and slows down my reading. But there's something pleasant about reading out loud, especially this book, and I suppose it's a good thing that I'm taking my time with this novel.

Good news is that we covered 2 chapters in one night all together.

The bad news (I actually do feel bad about it) is that we had to cancel our plans to see the movie Twilight, since we wouldn't be able to finish the book in time. I've never seen a film based on a good book without having read the book first, so I wasn't about to start now, but I was still disappointed. Why couldn't I have gotten the book sooner?

On the other hand, I suppose it's a good thing we're postponing seeing the movie, because it allows me to finish the book more leisurely.

Unfortunately, for my brother and sister, I've been impatient to see what happens next in the book (as usual) and read ahead of them. A lot. I've left them in the english dust. They've got a couple of chapters of catching up to do, so I'll probably have to wait and become more impatient. (Hey, I brought this on myself)

Back to good news, like I said before, I am really loving this series! I can see why some would compare it to Harry Potter. You can just become lost in this fantastically descripted world.

I'm frustrated however that whenever I read about the handsome vampire boy in the story, Edward, my head always comes up with the face of Robert Pattinson, who plays him in the movie. As much as I dislike seeing movies before reading the book, I dislike having my imagination robbed from me like that (though he is very cute. Just the perfect guy to play Edward) . Why'd I have to watch all those awesome previews?

Besides Twilight, there's other good news. For one thing, the pizzas we made today were delicious (as per usual.)

On the other hand, I hadn't even wanted to have pizza in the first place. We've had this pizza tradition for a long time now, so in order to get rid of it slowly, I proposed only having it on the last tuesday of every month instead of every tuesday. Unfortunately, Adam didn't remember this, and was disappointed when I told him we weren't having pizza. I felt a bit guilty about that, so Benny, Annette and I roused ourselves into pizza chef mode and actually made the pies in seemingly record time (though no one had a timer.)

On the bright side, my twin and I have finally finished animating the Arabic alphabet, both right and left handed sets! All we have to do is record an arabic person's voice saying the alphabet and their 1-2-3s (as well as a greek person, haven't gotten that done yet) and we're ready to move on.

On the not so bright side, I don't think I've memorized the Arabic letters or names as well as Greek. I need Annette to help me in reciting them. I fell short on my expectations, but in my defense, Arabic letters look quite alike. You can only tell them apart because some have a dot over them or something. But besides that, it seems like there's some website host trouble, so you can't check out the site anymore. I hope that gets fixed soon.

Well, I think that's all I'm revealling tonight (that's probably all you can take anyway). To end this on a high note, tomorrow will be my first Writing Day in my self-imposed, hectic "Buzz" schedule. On the sidebar I have all the days I plan on writing this month. Wish me luck!

Edit: The website trouble is over. Now you can see how we've added the Greek and Arabic languages. You can't hear how the letters are pronounced, though. Here's the link!

Catch-up Time # 2

Alrighty then. My first new blog post of the year (not including my book review of The City of Ember). I have a few things I want to say:

1. I think I'm going to get rid of my movie blog. It's not as fun writing about movies as it is about books I've read. Besides, I can always write about them in my regular blog. I don't need a special blog just for films. So, after I write this post, good-bye Maggie's Movies, and it's one review about Madagascar 2, (which I didn't really like anyway) I'm not really going to miss you. I don't think anyone else will either.

2. Eating with chopsticks is so cool. Since last Friday I've been turned on to it. I've even eaten spaghetti with chopsticks. It really makes you focused on your meal and you get to appreciate it more. Plus it only lets you take bite-sized pieces at a time, so it makes the food last longer. Try it out, it's really fun!

3. On Jan. 2nd I finally got a beautiful scrapbook from an arts and crafts store. It's really suppsed to be a sketch-book, but with it's blank, no-lined pages, I've got an even more creative purpose for it. I'm going to tape all my memorobilia from this year into this notebook. Ticket stubs, reciepts, birthday cards, everything (so far I've even taped the wings of a dead butterfly I found on a walk. Sorry, butterfly).

4. I resolve to write about my progress on my novel more often. Like I put up in my comment to Dashner Dude's most recent blog post, I've devised an interesting writing scheduel for myself. It's quite creative: On January 7, I will write the whole day.(if nothing interferes with that, that is) Then, a week later on the 14th, I will write all day, then 17, because it has the number 7 in it, then 21, then I will write two days in a row on 27 and 28. Then, because it will be February after that, I'll write a week after the 28th, which would be Feb. 4, then on the 7th, then the 11th, and so on and so forth, always writing on a day of the year that is a multiple of 7 or has 7 in the number and even every day of the month that has a multiple of 7 or 7 in it. I know, a little confusing, but I'll be able to keep track, and that's what matters. Doesn't matter if you guys can't keep track!

5. I'm a bit frustrated that I have so many holds in the library, like 15, and only 1 of those holds is ready for me. That's the book Coraline. A bunch of others are only intransit, whatever that means, but it means I can't get them yet! Books like Twilight (which I really want to read before I see the movie!) and the first Erec Rex and the rest of theEmber series. These books sound so awesome, and yet I can't have them! Why won't the library let me have them yet? Why?

There, I think that's enough for now. Thanks for reading. (And again, J.N., I appreciate you thinking about me in your blog.^.^)